Oh mama, I cannot live without you.
You pop into my head daily, and sometimes it makes me emotional because I don’t get to see you as much as I wish I could. There is so much I could say about you and your beautiful soul, but it would honestly turn into a whole series of books.
Instead, I want to share the story behind my favorite picture of you.
On this day, you were in the middle of chemo, fighting cancer. You were sick, weak, and sad. But you looked over at me and said, “We’re going fishing.”
I remember being so confused about how that was even going to work.
We got in the car and went fishing anyway. You were trying to teach me how to cast your line because you didn’t have the strength to do it yourself. Of course I couldn’t do it right, so you stood up and said you were going to do it. You threw it twice as far as I did. You cried because it hurt, but you were so proud of yourself.
Then we sat and waited. Honestly, I had no hope we’d catch anything because I couldn’t cast the line and you couldn’t keep doing it.
But then I turned around and saw you slowly jumping up and reeling in a fish.
I grabbed my phone and started taking pictures, but I could tell you didn’t like that because of how you felt, so I stopped. (But I’m so glad I got this picture.)
You couldn’t bring yourself to kill the fish because you just weren’t feeling up to it, so you asked a random guy nearby to do it while you looked away. Then you gutted it, smiled at me, and said, “Alright, let’s go.” We packed up and went home.
We got home and you started throwing up, came out on the couch with me and held my hand and said “today was good!”
That was the moment I realized my mom was an absolute badass.
I will never forget that day.
Happy birthday mama. I love you endlessly🤍
